


a face to call home

by cinderlily



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 12:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9490289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderlily/pseuds/cinderlily
Summary: Connor wouldn't admit it, in general, but he'd spent a good chunk of his life just seeing how things went.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Pure sap. I can't help myself, I swear, Murphs is a sap. It's not my fault. 
> 
> Also, hopefully didn't butcher the German language.

_Little by little, inch by inch/We built a yard with a garden in the middle of it/It ain't much but it's a start/You got me swaying right along to the song in your heart/And a face to call home/A face to call home_

John Mayer- Face to Call Home

If he was honest, Connor hadn’t actually thought this whole shit out. But he wasn’t going to tell people that. He was born to go with the flow of things. He wasn’t an intense child, it wasn’t tiny Toews or anything. He knew he wanted to play hockey, knew he had to kick his ass into gear to get there and did so but like. That was about as far as he thought things out.

Then he got to Arizona. 

Which was hot. And weird. And had zero seasons but he was playing for the NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE. He had no idea what he was doing. He’d gotten to the show and so maybe, perhaps, he started flying by the seat of his pants. 

He made friends, he played well. He learned the street names. The places that had good food, the places to avoid. He learned where would not give him too much shit for looking younger than his actual age. He was good. 

Then, a little over a year later, Tobias joined the team. Which … flipped the script to put it mildly. They became friends easily. Tobi became a part of his life as if they hadn’t grown up on two different continents. Quickly he forgot who he was, especially in Arizona, without Tobi nearby.

The latent bi-curiousity that Connor had found totally normal in his youth came roaring back about three months in, when Tobi walked out of the shower and into the locker room and Connor took way too much attention. 

He felt embarrassed and annoyed with himself but the thing was, Tobi didn’t seem to mind it at all. He didn’t give Connor the side eye that a lot of other players did when a player got caught looking. He didn’t get the traditional ‘Locker room rules’ rebuke. Rather Tobi winked at him and smiled. 

It had taken just a little over three weeks until they had fallen into bed, citing alcohol consumption that really hadn’t been that much. After that, their easy friendship turned into an easy friendship with benefits. It was… nice. Or Connor thought it was. The fact that he lived with his fuck buddy was a sweet bonus. 

Until it wasn’t. 

Until his fuck buddy made a point to say he might not be coming back to the Coyotes, until he didn’t sign a damn contract until the very end of a ridiculously long run of Hockey World Cup that had Connor on the edge of his seat for a different reason than his other friends. It was painful. It was horrible. It was most definitely not how you should feel if your fuck buddy might be moving away. 

Because losing a fuck buddy, even one who was your best friend, didn’t leave you feeling like you’d lost all sense of direction. Like you were devastated and horrible and lonely. The ‘flying by the seat of his pants’ part of his life came crashing down in a sudden and fiery way with Tobi playing in Canada and not taking him to restaurants he didn’t want to go to, before screwing senseless and sharing a bed even with a second in the house.

In a desperate act of hope that, well, _something_ would happen and as a means of distraction, he bought a house. He thought, hoped, and prayed, that it would settle him a little. Make him feel like he was grounded finally. The fact that he bought it with the image of Tobi around every corner was something he kept to himself until Tobi _actually_ signed the damn agreement. 

And if he pinpointed any moment in their life, it was that. That moment. The phone call he got from Tobi saying he was coming back, two years to prove that he wanted to be a Coyote do or die… well. It shifted their relationship and Connor as a person. 

Life stopped being about just him or figuring shit out as he went along. Rather he took stock in the little things that could affect Tobi. He told Tobi what he wanted, and was shocked that Tobi wanted it to. He introduced him to his parents, again, as something new. He forced himself to remember a few German traditions around holidays to make Tobi feel more at home. 

The look on Tobi’s face on December 6th when he woke to find his skates had chocolate bars and a gift card to iTunes was worth pretty much everything. 

He felt roots building beneath him and for the first time in his life, it wasn’t really scary. It was nice. It was comforting and brilliant and every single thing that he’d doubted his friends saying about getting in serious relationships for. (Though he kept that bit to himself.) 

When the two years had come and gone and he still had three years on his contract and Tobi had a brand new shiny five year contract… well. It just felt natural to do what he knew was the inevitable. 

He organized it to be simple. Nothing too wild. Just a nice dinner a few weeks before the season started. On their porch, _their porch_ , with steak and potatoes that Connor didn’t make because he was aware of his kitchen skills. Beer, because he wasn’t a sap to bring champagne out. 

They ate dinner happily, it wasn’t too rare for them to do it, but Connor was all too aware of every single shift of his body. His pocket felt heavy and his smile felt like it could probably break his face in half. He felt like Tobi had to know what was going on, but he didn’t say anything about it. 

They talked about the season ahead and joked about Ollie letting the C go to his head and Connor’s A going straight to his head. They let their world go around them. The sunset was beautiful, as always, and it was still early enough in September that it was warm and nice out. 

Connor had actually tried his hand at making Tobi’s favorite cake, Red Velvet, and it was pretty much edible which he thought was an unqualified success on multiple levels. He watched as Tobi ate it, faking quite well that it was the best cake he’d had ever. 

“Hey Tobes?” he said, finally, when the cake was done and he was on his last few sips of beer. 

Tobi looked at him and smiled. “Do I have frosting on my face?” 

He did, but that would be for later. Connor lifted himself to grab the box out of his pocket and put it on the table. He wasn’t a down on one knee guy and he knew Tobi wasn’t either. 

“Ich leibe dich. Willst Du mich heiraten?” he butchered.

Tobi blinked at him for a solid minute before he grinned and said, “Yes. Idiot.” 

Connor kissed him and not for the first time, but in the truest sense, felt ‘home’.


End file.
